Burned (Devil's Blaze MC #3)(7)

“You son of—”

“That look right there, the one that says I just destroyed your world… all over again.”

With that, Colin leaves. We all stand there frozen, unsure of what to do or say. Skull screams, yanks the table up, and throws it across the room.

Fuck.





“You alright, boss?” I know he’s not, but don’t know for the life of me what else to say.

“No. And for the record, I wasn’t alright the other ninety-nine times you asked me.”

We’re walking from the garage back to the club. We spent the night in Tennessee, then drove straight here. Skull’s barely spoken two words to any of us. He bunked down in Sabre’s room last night, but Sabre just shrugged this morning when he came out. Well, no, that’s wrong. He shrugged, then put the locket that Skull usually wears around his neck in my hand. It’s still in my pocket, in fact. Since the day we discovered it in Pistol’s hands when Beth was kidnapped, Skull hasn’t taken it off. Not once. It’s been almost three years and still it’s remained around his neck. The sight of him not wearing it now should bring me joy because I’ve been hoping he would heal and move on for years. Now, it doesn’t. He isn’t healed. He removed it because he just learned his grief and mourning have been a lie. No one has mentioned it, but everyone’s thinking it. It’s not even a question anyone seems to be asking. We all believe that Beth is alive. Every last brother here is sure she is, and the kicker is, they don’t even know what I do.

I haven’t found the right moment to tell Skull about the call I got so long ago from a young woman claiming to have a message from Beth. I wish I could go back, but I can’t. I wish I would have went to that hospital and met with the woman. I wish I had at least tried to find out what was going on. It didn’t even f*cking occur to me that it could be true. People don’t just come back from the dead… It just doesn’t happen.

We’re all sitting around the wooden table in Skull’s office now waiting for church to begin. Skull sits at the head of the table, but he’s not made any move to begin the meeting. I know I need to confess what I know, and I will. I’m just having trouble finding the words. How do you explain to someone that you are probably the reason why his woman didn’t contact him after all this time? If the shoes were reversed, I’d gut me.

“Torch, I need you to start intel,” Skull tells me. “Find out any way you can if the picture that Donahue left behind is real. I want to know everything I can about the two women in the photo and the…” he clears his throat before continuing, “the child.”

“Got it, boss. I… I wanted to talk about—”

“Start in Tennessee,” he goes, “since that’s where the f*cker said she was. But don’t waste a lot of time. Chances are, he fed us wrong information. He’s playing with me. I want to say the women in the photo are fakes, but sweet Jesus, it looks so much like… like Beth.”

“Boss…”

“You might could try France. If Colin told the truth and they did off the grandfather, that’s where he lived. That might be the smartest way to check Colin’s story.”

“Boss!” I growl, this time demanding his attention. Skull stops and, for the first time since the meeting began, looks at me.

“What is it?” he asks.

Here it is: my opening. The time for me to confess. Fucking hell, I’ve been a member of the Devil’s Blaze for a lot of f*cking years. Before that, I served my time overseas facing down IED’s, enemy fire, and certain death. Still, none of that compares to the knot that’s in my stomach right now.

“Boss, do you really think Beth is alive? That she could have somehow survived? And wasn’t her sister supposed to be dead, too? This could all be Colin just blowing smoke up our asses while he’s starting more shit.”

He holds his head down and rakes his fingers through his hair. There’s still a small tremor that tells his emotions.

“I think there’s a real possibility,” Skull confesses. “Colin would have never come at me to rub this shit in if he didn’t know for sure. I’m left here feeling f*cked up because I want it to be true, but I also don’t want it to be. If it’s true, that means she has played me all this time. It means… Fuck, Torch, I’m so f*cked up I’m not sure what it means.”

“Boss, I need to tell you something.”

“Can it wait, mi hermano? I want to get this done.”

“Boss. I think… that woman with Beth in the pictures, her sister… I think she called here.”

Skull’s face goes cold. It literally freezes almost into stone. I’m proud of myself; a lesser man would shit himself. That’s the look I’ve seen on Skull’s face right before people die.

“Explain,” Skull says, one terse word while his fists open and close.

“That night at the movie theater before Tiny and all that shit went down… remember? The fight with Dragon?”

“Si.”

“You were shit-faced, boss. I was just about to leave you to sleep it off and… your cell phone rang. Some chick was on the other end claiming Beth had been coming to find you. She said… f*ck, boss. I can’t remember what she said. She said there were complications and Beth was at the hospital in London. In the maternity wing—”